A poet’s (poetical) prose about poetry. Walcott’s (The Bounty, etc.) humid rhetoric can overwhelm a subject, as when “I try to divert my concentration from that mesmeric gritted oyster of sputum on the concrete floor.” And so, a reader wandering through the periodically flowery byways and orotund arabesques of these 14 essays may long, instead, at times, for a more plainspoken, adamantine critical voice—like that, say, of poet-critic Mary Karr. Yet entwined here with the tricky verbal vines and orchids are also insights of an unusual provenance. West Indian—born Walcott’s views of current poetry and postcolonial culture are admirably independent and syncretic. He is able to take the measure of such stylistically distinct avatars as the relentlessly, redemptively flinty British poet Philip Larkin and American confessionalist Robert Lowell. Walcott spikes his intermittently languid reveries with comments that crackle: “Modern American poetics is as full of its sidewalk hawkers as a modern American city: this is the only meter, this is the American way to breathe, this is the variable foot,” he complains. That error isn’t his. Rather, the 1992 Nobel laureate explores, in the emphatic plural, poetry’s various islands, while diverging now and then to authors of prose. He claims Hemingway as “a West Indian writer” and salutes the Trinidadian C.L.R. James for Beyond a Boundary, termed by Walcott —a cricketer’s Iliad.” Still, our critic’s lens isn’t flawless. As an apologist for Ted Hughes, Walcott proves laughably sentimental: “Poets come to look like their poetry . . . Hughes’s face emerges through the pane of paper in its weathered openness as both friendly and honest. It speaks trust.” Rather conspicuously in an era of major contemporary women poets, the book omits positive mention of women (save for Dickinson) as anything more than muselike pretty faces; they are simply not part of Walcott’s poetic roll call. But so goes literary independence. An archaic male vanity makes some mistakes on the poetic prowl.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-28841-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...
Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.
The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.
An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.Pub Date: July 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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